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By Root 1548 0

loud applause. He acknowledged the awkwardness of the moment. For a long time “part of England” had denied praise or even recognition to American inventions. And British disdain had become “a festering thorn in the hearts of some of the most cultivated in the land” (including, although he did not say so, of course himself). He therefore considered the evening not only a gratifying testimonial to him but also a sign to his fellow Americans of a new British generosity, a new “disposition to show them both justice and honour.” And the Anglo-American telegraph, he declared, would produce “a firmer peace and a better understanding,” even a global solidarity: not “E pluribus unum”—many in one—but “E omnibus unum,” all in one.

London newspapers reported the evening’s events in detail. Many condemned the studied absence of any reference to Wheatstone. One criticized Morse’s dig at the supposed British failure to honor American inventors: “on the contrary, there was a strong disposition in England to give Americans credit for a great deal more than they are justly entitled to.” But generally the London press praised Morse and the transatlantic cable endeavor as healers of old wounds: “The guest at the Albion,” the Times remarked, “has deserved well of the world, and in his generation has done much to advance the cause of human progress. We rejoice to see England and America united in a project so honourable to both nations.”

Morse and Sarah returned home in the late fall. He planned to stay in the United States only about six months, returning to England next spring as “Electrician” for the climactic laying of the cable. The interlude lasted just long enough for his pleasure in his overseas triumphs to evaporate.

F. O. J. Smith was suing again for alleged rights in the extended patent—“the appointed thorn,” Morse called him, “to keep a proper ballast of humility in S. F. B. M. with his load of honors.” But others also questioned his honors, as happened a half-dozen years ago after the Sultan of Turkey made him a Pasha. Under the headline “HAVE WE A KNIGHT AMONG US?” one newspaper reported his receipt of the Danish Order of Dannebrog and razzed him as “Sir SAMUEL.” Another paper reported (correctly) that his grandfather on his mother’s side was an Irishman. He learned that Joseph Henry was preparing a rebuttal to his Defence (Attack!).

The assaults left Morse gloomy, “much depressed in spirits from the state of my affairs.” Czarist St. Petersburg had seated him among princes; monarchical London had toasted him as an agent of human progress. America sued and mocked him, preyed on him with the rapaciousness of a “money-worshipping society,” as America was becoming. For years he had railed at French Louis-Philippe and Austrian Metternich, British abolitionist and Italian pope. But now a woeful thought occurred to him. He might be better off living there himself: there—Europe. “I am sometimes disposed to offer all my property in America for sale at auction, take the proceeds, and retire into some nook of Europe for the remainder of my life.”

Morse sought relief in continuing his cable experiments, “studying & solving problems with the intent of removing all the probable or possible difficulties.” It was no place to seek relief. He learned that Daniel Craig had again been boosting the Hughes telegraph in the press, undermining Amos Kendall’s ongoing negotiations with Field’s American Telegraph Company for the lease or purchase of Morse lines. Kendall pleaded with Morse to give up the idea of going out on the cable-laying expedition. “Your true friends do not comprehend how it is that you give your time, your labor and your fame to build up an interest deliberately and unscrupulously hostile to all their interests and to your own.”

Morse still hoped that the Hughes-Craig-Field connection might prove to be illusory or benign. He inquired about it again in a seventeen-page letter to the wealthy industrialist-inventor Peter Cooper, Field’s partner and president of American Telegraph. Cooper’s eighteen-page reply was in a sense balanced: